Nadal Does It Once Again

World number one Rafael Nadal won his fifth consecutive Barcelona Open title on Sunday with a 6-2, 7-5 victory over Spanish compatriot David Ferrer. Top seed Nadal, who also beat Ferrer in last year's final, exchanged early breaks with the fourth seed on the clay in the Catalan capital before racing into a 5-2 lead and taking the set with an ace.

Ferrer put up more of a fight in the second set as the pair broke each other twice but lost his serve again in the 11Th game and Nadal sealed victory on his second match point when Ferrer went long with a forehand. The 22-year-old Mallorcan has only lost four times on clay since 2005, most recently to fellow Spaniard Juan Carlos Ferrero at last year's Rome Masters when he was not fully fit.

Comeback

Arsenal's Cesc Fabregas takes the ball around Middlesbrough goalkeeper Brad Jones to score a goal during Premier League match in London. Fabregas ended Arsene Wenger's wait for a win over Middlesbrough by scoring twice in Sunday's 2-0 success at the Emirates. Fabregas's double, his first goals in nearly six months, was enough to maintain Arsenal's bid for third place in the Premier League and piled on more relegation fears for Middlesbrough.

It was Arsenal's first win in six matches against Gareth Southgate's side and Middlesbrough are now facing an increasingly difficult scrap to avoid relegation, with this defeat - their 11Th successive loss on the road - leaving them three points adrift of safety. Arsenal's hopes of catching Chelsea to book an automatic Champions League place next season, remain alive and Wenger will prepare for the crunch semi-final with Manchester United confident of upsetting Old Trafford supremo Sir Alex Ferguson yet again.

United boss Ferguson was in the stands at the Emirates to witness Arsenal's sixth successive home win and Wednesday's match at Old Trafford promises to be yet another epic encounter in a season that has been packed with them.

Take Care

Do you get up frequently to pee at night? Well, it's high time that you consult a doctor, for a new study has revealed that nighttime urination raises a person's mortality risk.

Researchers have carried out the study and found that people suffering from nocturne, the need to urinate at least twice during the night may have a significantly increased risk for mortality. Using data from national health system, they assessed differences in survival stratified by presence or absence of nocturne over three years. They then adjusted the models to control for age, sex, BMI, diabetes, hypertension, and history of coronary heart disease, nephropathy, alcohol consumption and use of tranquilizers, hypnotics or diuretics.

The study showed that there was a significantly increased mortality rate in elderly patients living in a Japanese assisted-living facility who suffered from nocturne relative to other residents.

Confidence

World champion Viswanathan Anand is a pioneer in Indian chess in many ways. Apart from his deeds on the board and his role in popularizing chess in India, he has also played his part in getting other Grand Masters to play in various European chess leagues.

In the 1990s, Anand played in the Yugoslav league for Agrouniverzal, where he and his recent World championship challenger Vladimir Kramnik were teammates. Agrouniverzal dominated the European Chess League during that period.

The Indian then moved to OSC Baden-Baden in the German Bundesliga where he has been for almost 10 years now. Anand’s presence in the European league must have certainly influenced players such as Krishnan Sasikiran, Pentala Harikrishna, Koneru Humpy and Sandipan Chanda to try their luck there as well. Sasikiran and Humpy played in the French league while Chanda had played in the Bundesliga for a couple of seasons.

Nail Biting Finish

Rajasthan Royals beat Kolkata Knight Riders through a Super Over to win the tenth match of the second edition of the Indian Premier League. Rajasthan Royals players celebrate after winning in the super-over against Kolkata Knight Riders at Newlands in Cape Town on April 23, 2009. In the Super Over, each team gets one over to bat and the team, which scores the most wins. Even then if it's a tie then the team which scores the most sixes in the match wins. Chris Gayle and Captain

Brendon McCullum batted for the Kolkata Knight Riders in the Super Over with Kamran Khan bowling for the Rajasthan Royals. It was a nail biter and the people who came to the ground witnessed one of the greatest matches of all time. Even though Kolkata lost they must be appreciated.

Rainy Day

Every cloud seems to really have a silver lining, for a new study has claimed that gloomy days are good for the brain.

An international team has carried out the study and found that while wet weather makes people feel gloomy, it also sharpens the memory and improves recall power while those who feel good as it's sunny are able to remember less well. It seems counter-intuitive but a little bit of sadness is a good thing. People performed much better on our memory test when the weather was unpleasant and they're in a slightly negative mood. On bright sunny days, when they were more likely to be happy and carefree, they flunked it.

They randomly placed ten small ornamental objects on the checkout counter, which included plastic animal figures, a toy cannon, a pink piggy bank and four small matchbox-sized vehicles, including a red London bus and a tractor.

Luxury Hotel

How about living in a hotel room with see-through showers, floating TV sets and mobile phone entry? Well, it’s no dream - a hotel in Paris is offering its customers an opportunity to experience the future of the hospitality industry.

Pullman Paris Bercy Hotel in Paris has come up what they call ‘visionary spaces combining futuristic techniques and state-of-the-art design’. The room features a special hotel key card with a radio frequency microchip to open it. The luxury room designed by Natacha Froger contains the centrally positioned bed, which is one of the comfortable ones that are in all Pullman and Sofitel hotels. A side table carved from a single piece of wood also serves as a bedside table and includes an ice cube bar and espresso machine.

Seemingly suspended in mid-air in the window is a 1.2m TV screen with an advanced 5.1 surround sound system. There’s also a touch-sensitive remote control that turns on all the room’s automated functions, including the bedroom and shower lights, along with video projector and light proof blinds. The hotel’s glass and stone facade creates the impression that it’s floating above the Seine.

Software for Mobile without IMEI

The Department of Telecom had issued notice to service providers to stop services to cell phones that do not have IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) number. Though the ban was to be implemented from March 31, there was an extension till April 15, heeding to the request of the service providers. Now it seems there is some good news for people who hold Korean mobiles. The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) has contrived software for cell phones, which can help in identifying the mobile stations even without an IMEI number.

Though this software may help overcome the ban, it is up to the Department of Telecom to approve this software. The ban was imposed based on intelligence reports that terrorists use these cell phones that do not have an IMEI number thereby making it difficult to trace their location and identity. A senior official stated that considering the fact that there are millions of customers who use such cell phones an alternative may be suggested instead of a ban.

Pseudo Relationship

Rumors of the Barbara Mori-Hrithik Roshan reported romance will continue till the release of Raakesh Roshan’s Kites later this year. Despite vehement denials from the lead actor and interviews to the media from his wife of eight years, the usually reticent Sussanne Khan says that Hrithik, Barbara and I are friends’ the lead pair of Kites will continue to be discussed in bedrooms and make up vans, and even provide material for a good publicity campaign for the desi version of Dirty Dancing. But that’s all it will be. Hrithik Roshan and Sussanne Khan are definitely not going in for a split. Reports have it that the light-eyed actor has even promised his wife that once Kites is completed, he will de-link himself from the Latino bombshell even professionally.

So Kites may well be the first and last film where these two actors will be seen together. Insiders say that Sussanne reportedly has issued an ultimatum to that effect. Coming to the point of the story, the film wives may be the last to know about the various romantic link-ups about their husbands. Most rumours are even dismissed as a figment of the media’s fertile imagination. But don’t fool yourselves. These ladies know exactly who it is that they have to axe from their famous actor-husbands’ list of leading ladies.

Recession Continues

Infosys Technologies has fired over 2,100 people across the country, post an annual performance appraisal exercise concluded mid-March. T V Mohandas Pai, head of the company’s HR, said that based on the performance 2,100 employees had left Infosys. The tolerance for non-performance has come down to zero. The appraisal was conducted for 60,000 of our employees. At the bottom, some 3.5% of the people were either out placed or left the company. It is an annual scenario after every performance assessment. Trainees were not part of this exercise. Outplacement is a new jargon used by enterprises, which means offloading excess/unwanted staff to another employer.

However, out placing is not a viable option in the current scenario where few jobs are available in the market. Infosys currently has an employee base of 1,05,000 which includes 45,000 trainees who were not part of this appraisal exercise. During the quarter ended December 31, the company had a total headcount of 1,03,078. A quarter ago, Infosys had said it would hire 26,000 new people during fiscal 2008-09, more than what it had projected in the beginning of the year. During the third quarter, the company made a gross addition of 5,997 with the net intake being 2,772. Infosys has made offers to around 20,000 engineering graduates for the current year. The company has been vocal about honoring all the offers it made to freshers.

Golf - A Brainy Game

University of Zurich researchers have found that the expert golfers have a higher volume of the grey-colored, closely packed neuron cell bodies that are known to be involved with muscle control. The finding attains significance as it suggests that golfers who start young, and commit to years of practice, can also grow their brains while their handicaps shrink. Coordinating all of the moving body parts with the right timing is key to executing a good golf swing consistently, and this co-ordination requires a brain that has learnt from many trial and error repetitions.

During the study, a research team led by neuropsychologist Lutz Jancke compared the brain images of 40 men divided into four groups based on their experience as golfers. The researchers recruited 10 professional golfers (with handicaps of 0), 10 advanced golfers (handicaps between 1 and 14), 10 average golfers (handicaps between 15 and 36), and 10 volunteers who had never played golf. They said that brain scans of the subjects showed that there existed significant differences in total volume of grey matter between the pros and the non-players.

However, there was little difference between the pro and the advanced groups or between the average and non-players groups. The researchers combined the pros and the advanced golfers into one group and called them experts. On the other hand, the average and non-players were grouped together and called novices. The research team said that the further grouping led to the emergence of a clear dividing line, showing that practice produces a noticeable step up in the brain's grey matter. According to them, this jump comes somewhere between 800-3,000 practice hours.

Recession - Harmful to Heart

The global recession is not only harmful for your pockets but can also break your heart. Doctors say the current economic scenario, where people are being laid off and share markets plunging into deeper crisis every day, can lead to severe health and mental complexities, including heart attacks, in people who are directly being affected by it. A research conducted in Yale University, USA, shows that involuntary job loss, especially for those at the later phase of their career, more than doubles the risk of heart attacks and stroke.

In the study, carried out on 4,301 individuals out of whom 582 had lost their jobs, researchers observed that job loss was associated with a range of stressful outcomes, including loss of pay and non-wage benefits, limited access to medical care and work-based social support, which in turn increase the risk factor for their hearts. Though the situation is not as worse in India as in the west, the financial hardship due to economy downturn can lead to very severe stress, which can directly affect the heart.